Hot and hotter in Châtillon Coligny


17/7/2013 - 19/7/2013

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The heat is not letting up and we slept a couple of nights with the fan on.

It's a bit of a tease having water all around you but not being able to go for a swim. There are of course people who swim in the canal. For me it is too dirty and rather large fish, thriving in these waters, are putting me off.

 On our walks around the medieval town we crossed many little bridges leading over the ancient moat which runs around the old centre and remains of the town wall. The 16th century "Tower of Hell"was once used for protestant cult prior to the construction of a protestant church. The salt attic, a small ivy hung stone cottage used to store salt on which royal tax was taken.

 Of course Châttillon has it's own château .

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As a matter of fact there is a château about every 5km along this canal. We are getting so blasé about this that on one of our cycle tours we only glanced at  some and carried on. 

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Instead we visited a few ancient écluses - the title "ancien" meaning more "former" or "old" in French. We also found one lock with an existing, working swinging bridge.

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On our last day we visited the local market and got a little carried away with our shopping as you can see. But 3.50 Euro for a kilo of the sweetest cherries was just to good to miss out on, and when we purchased our fresh bread the baker with a few chouquettes (small sugary choux pastries) thrown in for good measure.

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Exhausted from all the shopping we refreshed ourselves with a glass of "Monaco" which everyone seems to be drinking here and is a mixture of beer, lemonade and Grenadier - basically a colourful shandy. 

Late afternoon, when the heat had subsided, we cast off leaving for Rogny-les-sept-ecluses".

The locks are continuing to be in excess of 4m, but the lock-keepers lower a hooked stick to pull up our ropes, so they can be looped around the bollards. Chatted with a nice young keeper who is studying film and and theatre and took the opportunity to promote The great Gatsby and Manly.

One a final note for today, Jane Byron has won the major prize for being the 1,000th visitor to our little blog site. So instead of just having our "Safe arrival" drinks for the days journey, we had to compound our new found drinking habit with a "Safe Arrival to 1,000 hits" drink. This mean't we didn't get to bed too sober tonight!!! Thanks Jane for the hang-over.

© Austin Robinson 2019